Thursday, November 18, 2010

10 Steps Forward...Of Course There Is a Step Back

Sept. 22nd, 2010

We had a minor setback this week. We were rocking and rolling and patting ourselves on the back and had two cents thrown at us that we should change our name. Even though I had seen the website with the same name as ours, I discounted it since it wasn’t a business and didn’t provide any services for sale and was solely on the web. If I had dug around more (and you had to dig)I would have seen that the guy who facilitates it is from Portland.

Crap. I was mad at myself more than anything. It is really important to own your brand and I know that, I teach that. And I’m irritated that the first money that we are throwing into the toilet is because of a rookie mistake. But it’s not a ton of money, I’d rather fix it early than have trouble with it later, and it’s just a name.

It’s amazing how invested and attached we get to a name. But I teach that as well, how powerful a name is. How calling someone by name, or writing to a person and addressing it to them, will get someone’s attention more than To Whom It May Concern. I tell a story in my workshop during resume and cover letter writing about a memory of going to Knott’s Berry Farm when we were young. I think I was in fourth grade and my brother, we’ll call him Michael for the sake of the story, had to be in third. We walked up to the stiles and the funny thing is I don’t remember any line at all, just walked right through and one of the guys called as we passed, “I hope you have a great time Michael!” My brother was blown away, a big O of a mouth and amazed looks at our parents who were standing grinning beside us. That guy knew his name, wished him a personalized good time!

My brother was wearing a baseball cap with his name embroidered on it.

A name is a powerful thing, but this time, it’s just a name. It’s not our business, it’s not our idea, our passion, our excitement, our contacts, our experience, it’s only on paper, and it’s not even that much paper. It is still a rose, and it still smells as sweet.

I did have to keep reminding myself that yesterday as I hit an emotional funk, whether it was feeling a momentary lack of support, the thought of re-doing a lot of work, the 11 hour days I’ve had to put in, not seeing my husband, work in general or maybe just the combination of all those factors made me want to curl up in the corner and whimper. It’s been a rough couple of weeks and being told that I was going to have to work doubles for the next six months, really didn’t help either.

This is a learning procedure, and this is not a rough lesson. I’ve completed the database from all of the business who requested teambuilding classes from my current employer. Those will probably be our bread and butter and with all of the double e-mails filtered out I have almost 90 contacts.Ninety! I could spout monetary projection of what that means if we only get a 9th of them to sign up, but I have loftier goals.

Today we are going to look at that property, and we are searching for a new name, and then we have to fix our logo, registry, etc. etc. Wish us luck on the hunt for a new name that we will love as much as the old one, and one that we can make our own.